New book ‘Our Enemies Will Vanish’ recounts Ukrainian resistance against Russian invasion

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• Geoff Bennett:

  The all out war in Ukraine will enter its third year next month, the battle lines nearly as frozen as the nation itself during this frigid winter, but, two years ago, there was concern that Kyiv wouldn't even last a week.

  Nick Schifrin brings us a book that explores how Kyiv survived, written by a foreign correspondent covering the war in the country of his birth.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Ukraine's national anthem is a dark, but determined call for freedom. It begins with the line, "Ukraine has not yet perished." But it continues, "Fate shall smile on Ukraine and our enemies will vanish."

  "Our Enemies Will Vanish," that is the title of a new book out today about the war by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal's chief foreign affairs correspondent, whose reporting from Ukraine before and since Russia's full-scale invasion has been indispensable, helping define our understanding of the war.

  And Yaro joins me here in the studio.

  It's such a pleasure to have you.

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  Great to be here.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Thanks so much for coming in.

  The book's extraordinary because of the breadth of the reporting. We will get to some of the specifics in a second. But it's also extraordinary because it is personal. You were born in Ukraine. This is actually a photo of you. That's you in the glasses right down there in art class as a kid.

  And you write in the book: "It felt wrong to wear on the streets of my hometown the vest and helmet by the botanical garden where I used to go on dates, by the museum where I used to spend afternoons. The Russians thought it was theirs in a country they believed didn't exist, part of a nation they told themselves had been invented. How dare they, I thought."

  How personal is this story for you?

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  Very much so. Very much so.

  And I have spent much of my career covering wars and insurrections in other countries. And I always prided myself of thinking of, oh, you know, Ukraine is such a peaceful place. It will never happen there.

  And then one day it did. And I was prepared for that. But, still, there's sort of this sense of personal insult, like, why? This is a city that is being bombarded, destroyed. And its people have done nothing to Russia.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Beginning with before the war, something that you reveal is that there was a difference between Ukrainian and U.S. intelligence before the war. The Americans had intelligence of what senior officials around Putin were telling Putin.

  But the Ukrainians had lower-level intelligence. And they knew that those generals, those senior officials, were actually lying to Putin. Explain that. And how did that play out?

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  Well, basically, the U.S. had a very high-grade intelligence. So they knew what the generals were telling Putin.

  And the generals were telling Putin that the Russian army, with all the investment, with all the money that was poured into it in the previous decades, has a capacity to rout Ukraine very quickly. And also they were telling him the Ukrainians will not be resisting very much.

  What the Ukrainians knew from contacts in lower levels of the Russian military was that a lot of that money had been stolen, that the Russian forces were not really as strong as advertised, and also a lot of the Russian spy network in Ukraine that was meant to facilitate this rapid takeover was actually not going to work for the Russians.

• Nick Schifrin:

  You were there before the full-scale invasion, the day of, and, of course, for months after.

  And you write extensively about how close some of the Russians came to Kyiv, to downtown Kyiv at one point. You point out the Russians had a 12-to-1 troop advantage right outside of Kyiv. How close did the Russians come to their initial goals in the capital?

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  Well, they got pretty close.

  The main Russian plan was to take over the Hostomel airfield, and it was a pretty small Ukrainian National Guard detachment made up of conscripts that managed to prevent the Russians from landing planes with the reinforcement there. That was a really pivotal moment in the very first morning of the war.

  And then the Russians were there. They were there for almost a month. They had crossed the river of Irpin to the east — to the west of Kyiv, and established a foothold. And it was a tremendous effort by everyone, the police, firefighters, volunteers, everyone who could hold a gun, to repel them at a very high cost.

• Nick Schifrin:

  One of the success stories that Ukrainians had by October 2022 is outside of Kharkiv and specifically in Lyman.

  What did you see when you were one of the first reporters into some of these areas liberated by the Ukrainian soldiers?

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  Me and Manu Brabo, the Spanish photographer who was with me throughout this war, drove very early in the morning into Lyman and were really among the first to enter. There were a few Ukrainian special forces just clearing the center of the city that were burning Russian vehicles.

  And so I'm driving on the road, and we saw blown-up Russian armored vehicles, one another, another, another. And we stopped, thinking, is it safe not to go there? And we saw a man crawling from behind one of his vehicles without a leg bleeding. He clearly was either part of the Russian forces or one of the looters trying to steal items from there.

• Nick Schifrin:

  You write about and reported extensively from Bakhmut as well.

  And even a year ago, you spoke to soldiers who were criticizing the Ukrainian focus on Bakhmut in Eastern Ukraine as taking away some of the focus from more strategic goals in the south. Why do you think President Zelenskyy had a sense that he could ignore some of the military advice he was getting?

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  I think, for President Zelenskyy, it was a political decision. And Bakhmut was turned into a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

  And the whole idea was, Ukraine is going ahead, it's not retreating. And it was at a big cost to the Ukrainian military, for sure. But it was also a big cost to Russia. If you remember, the main Russian force that was — the only Russian force that was on the ground in Bakhmut was Wagner, which was the only Russian force that was capable of offensive operations in Ukraine in the — since the spring of 2022.

  And Wagner was destroyed in Bakhmut.

• Nick Schifrin:

  The book's subhead is "The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence."

  And you write, looking back on the one-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion: "It was clear Ukraine had won the war for its independence. Ukraine wasn't going to disappear from the map once again."

  That is, of course, still true today, two years almost after the full-scale invasion. But I wonder if you think that it's good enough, or whether Ukraine and Ukrainians who you talk to think that that is good enough.

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  Well, it's never good enough, obviously.

  And Ukrainians do want to regain the other 18 percent of the country that are under Russian rule. There are many Ukrainians living there in terrible conditions under occupation. But the country has survived. And it is continuing to survive at a tremendous cost, because, though the front line hasn't moved much in the last year, there are battles every day, and people are dying every day.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And so the war continues.

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  So the war goes on.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Yaroslav Trofimov. The book is "Our Enemies Will Vanish."

  Thank you very much.

• Yaroslav Trofimov:

  Thank you.